What is wine fraud and what do consumers need to know?

0:00When life gets unpredictable, preparation matters. In medicine it's all about staying alert, ready for whatever comes through the door. On the road, it's no different. That's why Volvo designs vehicles to help anticipate risk, reduce harm and protect lives. The Volvo XC90's advanced safety systems inspire confident decisions wherever the road takes you. The Volvo XC90 for life. Proud sponsor of the pit podcast. Learn more at VolvoCars.ca-safety 822 and minus 9 degrees in downtown Montreal feels like minus 10, but it's sunny out there. It looks beautiful out there. John Tercone is our wine expert, Bromelier here on weekends with John Beckess on the Sunday edition. He joins us this morning to discuss wine fraud. There's a thing. It exists. It's quite profitable and it's tricking wine consumers in some clever ways. If you think about it, John, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

1:01Good morning. Okay, so you sent me a bunch of documentaries and links to look up before this interview. One of them is called Sarah Grapes and it's really very interesting indeed. When do we say wine fraud? Is it that it's not wine in the bottle? What are we doing? What do we mean? It can be wine. It's just basically misrepresenting what you're selling. And the thing with wine is it is actually really easy to do. In my mind's eye, especially if you think about it here in Quebec, right? Because we're sort of government, we're not sort of government regulated. Yeah, we are. So I guess it would be more difficult, but that's not the case in most markets. So what exactly do we know happens here? Well, this is more in the secondary market. So we're talking the resale market like auction houses. So we do have that in Quebec and it's not as tightly regulated as regular products would be because there's no testing and also you kind of don't know who sold these things to you.

2:04And also like let's face it, no one really knows about wine. No one knows what these things are. So to fool people, it's quite easy. Okay, so when you say no one really knows about wine, I think that's one thing we have to get as a starting point, right? Because a lot of people are like would be connoisseurs. We know the kind of wines that we'd like, but we don't know a lot about. I mean, we don't have your level of knowledge on this. So where and how are people being tricked? Well, this is how there's a few. There's two ways where this whole thing started. I forget the name of the producer, but either way here's the example. You don't have Magnum bottle is like a larger size bottle. The big, the big, big ones. Yeah. So a wine producer noticed that there was 10 Magnums of his, let's just say for example, 1976 vintage up for sale on the secondary market. And he's not that quite curious as his family didn't make any Magnums here. Okay, problem. So you basically have someone who is grabbing all bottles, making labels, going to Costco, blending different wines and selling them as these things.

3:07It's really that easy. You just take the label. If you watch a documentary, it's not that easy because the guy is quite like just sophisticated. You know, if you want to call it that, but it takes a real high level of knowledge to be able to fake these things. You need to know like this type of bot like it has your full body, et cetera, et cetera. And actually, this guy, his name is Rudy Karnaiwan, who was from Indonesia. And I actually really get into these high society types just by being very vague about like who we knew and whatever addressing nicely. But he basically lived in some rundown apartment and it was making wine in his bathtub and selling these things for millions and millions of dollars. And it's so interesting because when you watch a documentary, it's kind of reminded me of that movie catch me if you can. Where you can just, you tell people, people will kind of believe what you tell them. But you would think that in this sort of high roller world of sophisticated wine connoisseurs, that there would be some tells, right?

4:09Wouldn't there be some signs that things were not what they're supposed to be? Because they're even tricking the labels to make them look dustier. Wouldn't there be tells? Let's face it in these circles of multi-millionaires and billionaires. How many people are other type of fraud? So you're going? You're going into these circles of people who are essentially trying to trick each other. And not only that, if you buy a fake wine, okay? And someone tells you it is fake. You're going to be so embarrassed. You're going to kind of not want to believe it's true. But you look at a documentary. There's a guy who's bought all these fake wines. He's going to all these specialists who are saying, like, this is garbage. And he refuses to believe it. He's like, no, I bought it from this guy. I know he has some fake bottles. But this one is real. It's so interesting because it's almost like you're too in. It's too big to fail at that point. You've spent too much money. Yeah, you've gone too far. Like, you know, it's like you played poker. You've gone all in. Like you got to go down with the show. But it's not interesting as well because you also say that once a bottle becomes expensive enough, it's kind of like a stock at this point.

5:16Everyone sort of says that's the one. Explain that. Well, it's also like these things are based on the market and etc. But also like they don't like the value and quality. It doesn't exist. Like if you're going to tell me a $20,000 bottle tastes a thousand times more expensive than something else, that's false. It's all based on speculation, on opinion, and it's based on kind of nothing. So then wine becomes commodity, right? I commodity. So it's not some of these are not people who are buying it for the enjoyment. I understand people collect wine. But this is just like the stock market at this point. Well, it's the buying it for the enjoyment of telling people that they spent money. And that's a lot of stuff like that with wine is not, hey, look how good this wine is. Hey, look how much money I spent. And as I say, when a lot of people be like, John, look what I had this weekend. I love saying congratulations. I will sometimes text you, but it's not. These aren't at the bottles. But the case of, because again, the documentary is called Sour Grapes. It's really a fun and interesting watch. But the case I went pronouncing his name while Rudy Kurniao.

6:18Am I saying that right? That's what I want. Yeah. Is he, is that like a one off? Because I mean, he managed to pull something off that was quite spectacular. Well, yeah, he also managed to do 10 years. And move back to Singapore and just keep going and doing exactly the same thing. But like without without being in the United States in front of everyone's eyes. But he couldn't, he can't be the only one, surely. Of course not. Of course not. But a funny anecdote. There's a gentleman in that documentary whose name is Raj Par. At Raj, I've had the opportunity to, you know, hang out with him a few times. And he told me he's met this guy. And he's like, I have never met in my life a better wine taster. Because, oh no, he would be able to call anything blind halfway like in his sleep drunk on the table. Because that's the thing is despite the fact that this guy was, you know, a crook and whatever, you have to be incredibly intelligent to infiltrate yourself in these circles, especially like as a non-white person that he was. Yeah, that's true. It requires skill. And you know, you kind of not admire him.

7:21But you know what? They kind of eat the rich mentality. Kind of do. John, you can follow along. John's many adventures on Instagram at bromelier. Again, this documentary, if you're interested in watching it, it's called Sarah grapes. It's all about fraud in the wine industry. John, thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. This was great. I heart radio is thrown it back. Twenty-tests the day. To the days of huge hits. And I forget all of those. A non-stop stream of the biggest invest. And more. All your decade defining favorites. All in one place. Hi, it's Katy Perry. Hey, it's Bruno Mars. This is Kesha. I'm twenty-tenths the decade on the free I Heart Radio app. Preset the station. So it's always one tab away.